


Before The Dawn - Deleted Scenes

by the-bi-sokka-club (blametheone)



Series: Before The Dawn [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blametheone/pseuds/the-bi-sokka-club
Summary: Deleted scenes from "Before The Dawn"
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Before The Dawn [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873093
Comments: 6
Kudos: 120





	Before The Dawn - Deleted Scenes

**i asked on tumblr if anyone was interested in some of the scenes that had to be cut from Before The Dawn and there was a strong yes vote so here we are!**

* * *

**(set shortly after sokka and hakoda arrived at the palace; written in the original outline but scrapped when the backstory changed)**

“I feel like maybe we could have possibly been stumbling towards the tentative beginnings of a slow burn where I potentially ended up eventually developing feelings for you,” Sokka spat.

Zuko deadpanned, patience gone. “How long did it take you with a thesaurus to put that sentence together?”

“Ha-ha,” Sokka rolled his eyes.

* * *

**the pacing of the plot was the hardest part of writing this fic tbh because it ended up being two separate fics that i had to mush together, but even before that, in the first draft, sokka’s backstory 'chapter' was just a couple paragraphs with interjections from katara speckled in, such as:**

_until they had tripped and stumbled and Zuko felt Sokka’s boner on his hip and then all of a sudden they were aggressive and kissing and wrestling and Sokka’s pretty sure Zuko ripped some of his hair out and it was awesome-_

“Sokka, please, if you say one more gross thing I’m gonna pukebend all over this nice garden.”

**and:**

Katara sighed. “Sokka, you’re telling me an upsetting story about your enemy turned conquest turned fiancé, spare me the jokes, please?”

* * *

**the scene when they finally admitted feelings (Part X) and got together was re-written _seven times_ , here are my favourites that were scrapped:**

Version 1

Zuko startled at Sokka’s arrival. He had been sitting on the bed until his door was opened and Sokka had emerged through, apparently reading. Now, he was sitting on the bed with his arms crossed, eyebrow drawn in.

“What are you-”

“No, I need to talk for a bit,” Sokka cut him off, throwing the curtains closed and sitting down against the windowsill. Yue couldn’t be here for this, not while the anger was rolling off of him in waves. She would just make him feel guilty.

“I’m sorry, okay,” Sokka snapped his head up, looking at Zuko. “I’m sorry I couldn’t answer you and I’m sorry I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what’s going on right now and everyone wants an answer from me and I don’t have answers, I don’t have answers, Zuko!”

Sokka stood up, marching over to the bed.

“I need you to answer something for me, now,” he pointed his finger.

~*~

Version 2

Zuko pulls Sokka into his lap and kisses the sweet spot on his jaw before he can stop himself, kissing down Sokka’s chest and letting his forehead drop and rest against the bottom of Sokka’s sternum.

“Do you…?”

Sokka takes care of Zuko, just like the night before, and realizes through the middle of it that there was never going to be another option for him. All of the feelings and the jealousy weren’t going to just go away if he decided ‘no’, because they were there because he wanted to be with Zuko.

(sad sex stuff, too depresso.)

~*~

Version 3

Zuko startled at Sokka’s arrival. He had been sitting on the bed until his door was opened and Sokka had emerged through, apparently reading. Now, he was sitting on the bed with his arms crossed, eyebrow drawn in.

“What are you-”

“Do you have paper? And ink?” Sokka cut him off, heading straight for the desk that was in the far corner of Zuko’s room.

“You came here for paper?”

“No, I came here because I need your help, because I need to figure this out and you can figure everything out with math,” Sokka rummaged through the contents of the desk, pulling out a blank scroll and a small brush and ink pot.

Zuko rubbed at his eyes and sighed, tying his hair up as he got out of bed.

Sokka had drawn a line down the middle of the scroll, and was furiously scribbling on each side. Zuko watched, eyes narrowed, trying to understand why Sokka was in his room, why he appeared to be vibrating with anxious and aggressive energy, and why he was _writing_.

“See, okay look,” Sokka showed Zuko the scroll. “Pros and cons list. They’re aren’t even, but I think the cons carry more weight?”

Zuko sighed, put the scroll on the desk and looked Sokka directly in the eye while he pointed to it.

“First of all, I don’t know if this is Water Tribe script or if your handwriting is just really bad, but either way I can’t read this,” he voiced, “Second, is this the pros list?”

Zuko pointed to one side of the scroll that had script running the entire way down it, whereas the other side only had two points.

Sokka nodded and Zuko continued.

“Then, even if the cons carry a lot of weight, isn’t it still worth it?” he crossed his arms. “Also, is this a pros and cons list about _us_?”

~*~

Version 4

“But I don’t think I’m ever going to have the answers and that terrifies me more, and I can’t keep looking at your face when you keep looking so sad,” Sokka crossed his arms, and Zuko slowly slinked out of the bed to reach him in the middle of the room. “Everyone I love gets put in danger, it’s like a curse, I can’t make my decision when your safety hangs on it.”

“Shh,” Zuko scooped Sokka into his arms. “You’re not making sense.”

Sokka pouted. He was making sense.

“I am already in danger, Sokka,” Zuko spoke softly, like he could read Sokka’s mind. “There have already been two attempted assassinations and I haven’t even been crowned yet.”

“Wha- you only told me about one!” Sokka tried to pull back but Zuko spoke over him.

“That’s not the point. The point is that you have a weird interest in dangerous people, Sokka, and you’re correlating things that have no shared cause. And also, I can take care of myself.”

* * *

**there was this on-going theme in the original outline that zuko kept dwelling on their past and bringing up old shit, even after they got together, which led to scenes like this, set before their wedding:**

He shouldn’t have been surprised when Zuko opened his mouth to ask a personal question, given this was their only time to really be alone other than at night (and they had to cut that out before more people caught on to what was happening).

“Hey,” Zuko murmured softly, lowering his swords. “When you yelled at me, after Mai left, you said something that got me thinking.”

“Mm?” Sokka made a soft noise, reaching over to take a cup of water and gulp it down, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

Sokka raised an eyebrow, waiting patiently for Zuko to keep going. The poor guy looked like he regretted setting up the question, like he wanted to back out of asking it. But, he didn’t.

“The day of the comet. When we broke up, or whatever… I left, and I… I never let you say anything,” Zuko wiped his brow. “What… what were you going to say?”

Sokka sighed, wanting to walk out, just a little bit.

“I don’t really remember what I wanted to say,” Sokka shrugged. “I didn’t have words, really, I was just mad.”

“Mad?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, like it was obvious. “Yeah, Zuko, of course I was mad! I didn’t want you to-”

Sokka had to stop himself. This had triggered something in him he didn’t know what there, and his throat was getting tight. He cleared it, and started again.

“I didn’t want it to end,” he coughed out. “I was mad that you just _decided_ for us and walked off. But I was mad mostly because I knew it wasn’t what you wanted, but I was too petty and stubborn to call you out.”

He held up his hands, dropping the sword to the floor.

“Zuko, I…” Sokka rubbed his face. “I’m going to go and wash up, okay?”

Zuko nodded, watching him leave, and maybe when Sokka was well out of the way he picked up one of the scimitars in anger and tossed it into the opposite wall.

* * *

**this little gem was meant to be included in the tea ceremony, the morning after the wedding. (fun fact, hakoda and sokka’s talk in the epilogue was also meant to take place after the tea ceremony because hakoda had _intended_ to have that conversation when he spoke to sokka before the wedding but they were interrupted):**

“Here,” Iroh handed Sokka the tea that had sat in front of Aang, iced by Katara for refreshment in the heat of Caldera City, “Throw this at your sister.”

Sokka grinned.

“Sokka, no!-” Katara gasped as iced tea was tossed all over her. Sokka’s small, satisfied grin remained the same as she began screeching about the beautiful material.

Katara glared at Sokka, waterbending the tea out of her dress and splashing it back into his face. Sokka sat, now freezing a little and face dripping with tea, still for a fraction before he reacted.

“Why would you do that?!” he cried out, pouting.

“Why did you throw it at me??” she shrieked back.

“Because Iroh told me to!!”

Both siblings froze for a moment, then turned to Iroh, and in eerie synchrony shouted, “Why did you do that?!”

Iroh chuckled, Sokka noticing with a glare that Aang, Suki and Zuko were also laughing. And _his dad!-_

“Dad!” he cried out, probably cutting off Iroh. Hakoda, busted, now laughed properly at the upset look on his son’s face, shrugging his shoulders sympathetically.

“I could say that it was a way of showing how siblings can be angry with each other without killing each other or threatening an Agni Kai,” Iroh shrugged. “But mostly, it was just funny.”

* * *

**and, tattoos! sokka likes his tattoos but he doesn't enjoy getting them**

Aang had, obviously, been tattooed before, but had never witnessed Water Tribe tattooing and was curious. He and Katara accompanied Sokka to find the shaman and Zuko, who insisted he was curious (but Katara was certain he just didn’t want to leave Sokka’s side), decided to tag along as well. Toph and Suki had overheard this and, adamant to not be left out, had also decided to join.

“Great,” Sokka threw up his hands, “Fantastic. It’s a whole adventure for everyone.”

“I don’t see what the problem is, Sokka,” Aang was grinning, because Aang was rude, “Mine didn’t hurt that bad.”

Sokka rolled his eyes and decided to ignore Aang, trying to calm his nerves. He had no reason to be nervous, but apparently his body didn’t agree.

Zuko wasn’t helping, either.

“I mean Aang was only eleven when he was tattooed, Sokka,” he could hear the stupid smirk in his stupid husband’s stupid voice, “And he says it’s fine. Are you sure you’re not just overreacting?”

“Okay that’s it!” Sokka stopped, turned to the crew and grabbed Katara’s hand, holding her closer to him. “Aang if you say one more thing I _am_ going to remind the guy that Katara was meant to get hers last year and she still hasn’t yet.”

Katara paled and Aang, predictably, stopped talking, holding his hands up in surrender.

“And you,” Sokka pointed to Zuko, who – to Sokka’s disappointment – was not afraid and refused to drop the smirk. “Please do not make me seek out divorce papers the day after our wedding.”

~*~

Zuko hadn’t quite stepped into the door when he saw the small bundle of sharpened bones shaped into needles, with long tips that were polished to fine points.

“I’ll,” he swallowed, “I’ll stay out here. Have fun, Sokka!”

* * *

**and finally, honeymoon! that’s right, kids, the fic was meant to continue well after the wedding but for pacing reasons i cut out the last two chapters, which is why we don't see the tea ceremony or tattooing either :)**

They leave for their honeymoon shortly after, going to the abandoned Western Air Temple. Aang and Katara plan to restore it in some way, whether they open it to other nations or create a shrine to the Air Nomads they’re not sure, but for now it remains abandoned and isolated.

(Most of their honeymoon is spent just being Sokka and Zuko, only this time without the threat of Sozin’s Comet, or Zuko maybe turning bad again. They eat and spar and sleep and joke around. They go fishing, Zuko looks for firewood while Sokka sleeps in and Sokka insists on taking care of the fire with traditional campfire methods and Zuko is lowkey very intrigued. They go over the parts of their cultures that they didn’t get to learn when they were young and travelling. Sokka tells Zuko about his childhood growing up in an igloo, and Zuko tells him about his family before Ozai became the Firelord.)

~*~

[while sparring]

“You’re lucky I like you so much or I would never let you win this often” and physically trips over the words to stop himself from saying ‘love’ instead of ‘like’.

“Sure, Sokka, you’re definitely ‘letting me win’,” Zuko smirks, and pulls lightly and the roots of Sokka’s hair like a _dirty cheater_.

~*~

“Would you have said it back, if I had let you?”

Sokka coughed on his water.

“Zuko, if we keep dwelling on what could have been, we’re going to be sad and bitter for our whole marriage.”

The look on Zuko’s face very clearly said ‘answer the question’.

“Ugh,” Sokka rolled his eyes. “Yes, Zuko, probably! I was sixteen years old and horny and terrified and if a gorgeous boy was holding me nearly every night and saying he loved me, _of course_ I would have said it back, and probably not long after you said it to me!”

Sokka grabbed Zuko’s face.

“You have to stop,” he insisted. “Please stop bringing up the past. I don’t want you to keep only looking back and regretting what we did and obsessing over what could have been. I’m _glad_ we broke up.”

Zuko looked horrified. “Excuse me??”

Sokka wasn’t budging, metaphorically. He crossed his arms and turned his chin in defiance.

“No, I mean it! I would have loved to have gotten the chance to have fallen in love with you then, and worried about you openly after you were hurt that day, and it would have been great to have actually celebrated my seventeenth birthday instead of spending the whole week of the solstice as a sobbing mess-”

“Sokka-”

“-but I’m still _glad_ we broke up, because now we get to come back together again as adults, who can sometimes talk about their feelings, and also? It means I know I love you.”

Zuko froze. Sokka didn’t notice.

“I don’t have to spend the whole time we’re together wondering if I’m only with you because you were the best option in a traumatic time of my life. I _know_ I want to be with you.”

Sokka looked like he was either going to cry or storm off and Zuko didn’t want either of those things to happen but he couldn’t make his mouth work. Sokka looked angry, even. He looked like he was angry that Zuko had pulled something out of him that he had buried deep down, and he was angry that Zuko wasn’t getting on board with the whole ‘leave it alone’ plan he had.

But that question had been gnawing away at Zuko’s insides like a slow and distant ache, all this time. On the day of the comet, he hadn’t let Sokka speak, hadn’t even asked what he wanted, had just gotten embarrassed and ruined a good thing. And the prince couldn’t be happier to be where they were now, and he agreed with Sokka fully and whole-heartedly that breaking up and coming back together of their own volition outside of war was probably better than staying together for the sake of it.

But that day had been killing him slowly, and he needed Sokka to know that he did care for his opinion. He did care about what Sokka wanted, even back then. But he was terrified, and seventeen, and dumb, and couldn’t bring put himself through the potential heartbreak if Sokka said he didn’t love him.

Zuko looked up at his husband and melted. Sokka wasn’t angry, Sokka was hurt.

He probably didn’t even realise what he had admitted.

“You love me?” Zuko eventually managed to breath out, and as he said it Sokka realised the brevity of his words, sitting back.

“Yeah,” the warrior nodded. “I do.”

* * *

**there are literally thousands of words worth of other deleted scenes but they’re being repurposed for a redeemed-azula fic in the works (you didn’t hear that from me shh) so this is what’s left! i was upset about having to cut a lot of this and i know that you guys really enjoyed the fic so i thought i’d throw all the crumbs i had left! love you all so much and can’t thank you enough for the support you’ve given.**

**(also doing these A/N's in bold type is giving me ff.net flashbacks and i have to go now, bye!)**


End file.
